



CO. 
€!( ■ 
Co. 

' ( 
CcC 

CCC 



. ■ ' c 
(C 

^iCC 






WOT C 



f LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. # 






I UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, f 



: <LC<L t 



a ( 






( c* *- - < 



c 




€ 


; ' 


C( 


( ' 


<v 




c 




<i 


vC 


<L 


ut 


<!l 


KMi( 


«: 


■^1 


« 


c 


«< 


f 






C 



•r CCGC 
, (>- i(C( < *^ ^ 

<•«: ■■'*■'■ ' 



... c < C 



-- n. «.< 

. CC<L 






i 

«: 

-■^v C C 






< -cc* 

., .<rc<ar 

<: -^ 

( f ■ 


















vC 


(K 


<<: 




«.<L,. 




«•< 




*^^ 


oc 


«<: 


or 


*C' 


CK 


*c 


c« 


«.c 


« 


*c 


oic 


«c 


at 


<C 


or 


«c 


«IC 


« 


«c 


«c 


• ^ 


*aL 



c >< CJ. < 

c « Ca. > 

C (C O, '. 
C c( C. ■ 

c<cc ^ 

dec <i: 






( CC 
< « c 



C ^ 



CC<J 






^' .■ «<a-. <-♦. 

^v <CL > 

^< «c< < 

^-<. **C^ 



^<^ «t 



.ax: '- 



cc Cv 

cc <J^ 






A DISCOURSE 



COMMKSIORATIVE OP 



HON. SAMUEL WILLISTON 



DELIVERED IN Till 



PAYSON CHURCH AT EASTHAMPTO:^, 



September 13, 1874, 



AND ALSO IN 



THE COLLEGE CHURCH AT AMHERST, SEPTEMBER 20. 



By W. S. TYLER, 

WILLISTON PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN AMHERST COLLEGE. 



/ 




SPRINGFIELD, MASS.: 

CLARK W. BRYAN AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
1874. 




HI 

■ WIS 



DISCOURSE. 



As we gather in this sacred place and come under 
the shadow of this solemn occasion, the very air 
we breathe seems to be full of voices. And it is 
not the noise and tumult of the world — it is not 
the speech of men or of angels — it is the voice of 
God that speaks to us. And as we listen and strive 
to hear and learn what He would say unto us, I 
seem to hear, uttered as distinctly almost as with 
an audible voice, such words as these : God only is 
great ; God only is wise ; there is none good but one, 
that is God. All flesh is as grass, and all the glory 
of man as the flower of grass. The grass wither- 
eth, and the flower thereof falleth away ; but the 
word of the Lord endureth forever. Let not 
the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let 
the mighty man glory in his might ; let not the 
rich man glory in his riches, but let him that 
glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and 
knoweth me ; that I am the Lord which exercise 



4 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness, in the 
earth. The righteous shall flourish like the palm 
tree ; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 
Those that be planted in the house of the Lord, 
shall flourish in the courts of our God. Blessed is 
the man that feareth the Lord ; that delighteth 
greatly in his commandments. Wealth and riches 
shall be in his house, and his righteousness en- 
dureth forever. A good man showeth favor, and 
lendeth ; he will guide his affairs with discretion. 
He hath dispersed ; he hath given to the poor ; 
his righteousness endureth forever ; his horn shall 
be exalted with honor. There is that scattereth, 
and yet increaseth; and there is that withhold- 
eth more than is meet, but it tendeth to pov- 
erty. The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he 
that watereth, shall be watered also himself. Give, 
and it shall be given unto you ; good measure, 
pressed down and shaken together and running 
over, shall men give into your bosom. For with 
the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be 
measured to you again. It is required in stewards 
that a man be found faithful. Who then is that 
faithful and w^ise steward, whom his lord shall 
make ruler over his household. Blessed is that 
servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 

SO doing. Of a truth, I say unto you, he will 
make him ruler over all that he hath. Blessed are 
ye that sow beside all waters. Cast thy bread 
upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many 
days. If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, 
and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy light 
rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon- 
day. And the Lord shall guide thee continually and 
satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy 
bones : and thou shalt be like a watered garden 
and like a spring of water whose w^aters fail not. 
And they that be of thee shall build the old waste 
places ; thou shalt raise up the foundations of 
many generations ; and thou shalt be called, The 
Repairer of the breach, The Restorer of paths to 
dwell in. 

All these Scriptures are naturally suggested by 
the occasion which has called us together. They 
are all more or less strikingly illustrated in the 
life, or impressed upon us by the death of our 
departed friend. God who, at sundry times, and 
in divers manners, wrote them in His word, now 
repeats them, as it were, in our ears by His Prov- 
idence. May He also, by His Spirit, write them 
in our hearts. Either of them might furnish a 
suitable and profitable theme for our special medi- 



6 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

tation at this hour. Each of them has occurred 
in rapid succession as a proper text for this dis- 
course. But none of them, perhaps, expresses in 
so few and fitting words the characteristic life-work 
of Samuel WilHston — tlie mission Avhicli he seems 
to have been sent into the Avorld to accomplish — as 
a part of the last passage which I have read. It 
is found in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, and 
the twelfth verse. 

" Thou shall raise up the foundations of many gen- 
erations ; anddhoii shall he called, The Repairer of 
the breach, The Restorer of paths to divell in'' Isa. 
Iviii. 12. 

And the lesson which the providence and the 
word of God commend to our especial considera- 
tion at this time is, The honor which is due to the 
founders of institutions, especially institutions of 
education and religion, for the benefit of many 
generations. 

The honor wliich is due to such men is seen, 

1. In the high estimation in which they have 
always been lield, both by God and by mankind. 

The two names, most honored of God in the his- 
tory of the church and the world, are Moses and 
Christ. And these are the names of the founders 
and lawgivers of the Jewish and the Christian church. 



COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 7 

Next in honor to Moses in the Old Testament, 
stand David and Solomon, of whom the one planned 
and the other built the temple, and both instituted 
the AYorship of the Sanctuary — both organized the 
outward kingdom of God on earth, with its palace 
on the literal Mount Zion, and its caj^ital the 
earthly Jerusalem. The most illustrious of all the 
followers of Christ was Paul, the founder of so 
large a part of the Apostolic churches. And while 
these men have been so highly honored of God, 
what names have been so widely known or so 
highly exalted as these, among men ? Who of all 
that have ever lived on earth, can compare with 
them in the extent, the -power or the sacredness 
of their influence ? 

In profane history, again, what names have been 
so honored in all ages and nations, as the found- 
ers of states, of schools, and of religious institu- 
tions. " The true marshalling of the degrees of 
sovereign honors," says Lord Bacon, " are these : 
In the first place are Conditores, founders of states. 
In the second place, are Legislatores, lawgivers, 
which are sometimes called second founders, or 
Perpetui Principes, because they govern by their 
ordinances after thov arc ""one." Then follow in 
regular gradation downwards, in the third j^lace. 



b COMMEMOEATIVE DISCOUESE. 

liberators ; in the fourth, mihtary defenders ; and 
last, civil rulers, all of whom the great philosopher 
ranks below founders and lawgivers. Orpheus, 
Amphion and Epimenides, among the founders of 
religious rites and mysteries ; Minos, Lycurgus and 
Solon, among the founders of states; and Socrates, 
Plato and Aristotle, among the founders of schools, 
must suffice as illustrious examples from ancient 
history. For the time would fail us to tell of Zo- 
roaster and Confucius, of Boodha and Brahma, of 
Romulus and Numa, and the other teachers, law- 
givers and institution-founders of antiquity, who 
lived at so early an age, that the imagination of 
men has almost clothed them with the attributes 
of gods. Still less can we enumerate the lesser 
lights that organized governments, inaugurated re- 
ligions and founded schools, and so extended their 
influence and perpetuated their memory in the 
later periods. In Mediaeval and Modern history, 
whiU greater names are there than those of Alfred 
the Great and Charlemagne, Washington and Jef- 
ferson ; and these are the names of founders at 
once of states and schools, of nations and colleges, 
of empires and universities. Such men as Clement 
and Origen, the founders and teachers of the far- 
famed school of Christian learning at Alexandria, 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 9 



and of the other catechetical schools and theolos"!- 
cal seminaries of the early church, were among the 
chief of the early Christian Fathers. There are 
no names more hallowed in the Catholic church 
than the founders of those monasteries which, with 
all their sins, have the merit of keeping learning 
and religion alive through the darkness and confu- 
sion of the Middle Ages. The founders, too, of those 
religious orders whose influence has been felt to 
the remotest bounds of Christendom, what veneration 
is felt for them by all good Catholics, from age to 
age. The names of St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. 
Francis, and Ignatius Loyola, have been canonized 
and embalmed in the religious societies which they 
established. And the founders of sects and of 
charitable and benevolent associations are scarcely 
less honored and revered among Protestants. The 
founders of the libraries, the scholarships and fel- 
lowships, and the separate colleges at Oxford and 
Cambridge, still live in those universities; their 
portraits and statues occupy the most conspicuous 
places in the halls, colleges and libraries w^hich 
they established, and their names are still spoken 
with pride and pleasure, as they have been for 
centuries, by the noble youth who enjoy the ben- 
efit of their liberality. The greatest and best of 



]0 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUIJSE. 

England's kings have been proud to identify their 
memories with these foundations. The good Queen 
Philippa founded Queen's College, and the queens 
of England have ever since been, ex officio, its 
patronesses. Christ Church College is the proud- 
est monument of the proud Cardinal Wolsey — it 
might well be said to be his onJy enduring monu- 
ment ; and the other colleges bear up the names, 
otherwise little remembered and seldom spoken, of 
some of the chief dignitaries of the church and the 
state. Who has not heard the names of Bodley 
and Eadcliff ? They are the synonyms of libraries 
and books, wherever there are scholars. 

In our own age and country, there is no surer 
passport to immortal remembrance than to be iden- 
tified with the origin and progress of those insti- 
tutions of learning, charity and religion Avhich are 
the characteristic and chief glory of our times. 
Here specification is needless ; for it were but to 
enumerate the principal academies, colleges and 
professional seminaries of New England — the chief 
charitable and religious as well as literary and scien- 
tific foundations of the country, so many of which 
hallow and perpetuate the names of their founders. 
Who can ever think of American missions without 
being reminded of Worcester and Evarts? It is 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 11 

honor enough for any man to have had anything 
to do with originating the Home Missionary, Tract, 
Bible, Temperance and Anti-Slavery Societies. What 
American scholar, aye, and what American citizen 
has not often repeated the names of Harvard and 
Yale ? What educated man, nay, what intelligent 
man, woman or child in the future periods of our 
history will not be familiar with the names of Phillips 
and Williston ? 

The honor which is due to the founders of insti- 
tutions, especially those of learning and religion, 
may be seen 

2. In the nature and value of these institutions. 

An institution is the embodiment of a principle, 
the organization and thus the multiplication and ex- 
tension of a power, the incarnation and perpetua- 
tion of a life. Sparta was a perpetuated Lycurgus 
Athens was Solon embodied and endowed with a 
kind of immortality. The Christian Church is the 
body of Christ — is Christ living, suffering, dying, 
rising again from age to age, and thus at length 
triumphing and reigning on earth as in heaven. 
A hospital with its succession of physicians and 
nurses, a charitable society with its successive corps 
of officers and agents and its undying ministries to 



12 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

the poor, the sick and the suffering, is a perpetual 
metempsychosis of Howard the philanthropist; only 
it is a larger, richer, mightier Howard better trained 
and better furnished for his work — the soul of How- 
ard animating the body of a hundred-headed and 
hundred-handed giant, and employing all its heads 
and all its hands in agencies of beneficence, and 
that giant perchance vested not only with ubiquity 
but Avith immortality. A school well endowed, and 
so sustained from generation to generation, is a 
school-master that never dies. Rugby is Arnold 
teaching and ruling in the hearts of his pupils long 
after Arnold is dead. Phillips has ceased from his 
labors, and his personal influence can no longer be 
traced. PhilliiDS Academy not only prolongs but 
multiplies his labors, not only perpetuates but en- 
larges his influence, not only transmits his wealth 
but transmutes it into the fine gold of a classical and 
Christian education. For while institutions are in- 
carnations of ideas and principles, they may be, and 
frequently are, spiritualizations of material forces, 
transfigurations of gross earthly substances into 
something quite ethereal and divine. An institu- 
tion, like a manufacturing establishment, can put 
in motion many hands instead of one or two, and 
those of far more delicacy and dexterity than the 



COMMEMOEATIYE DISCOUESE. 13 

fingers of the founder. An institution can perpetu- 
ate the name and the influence of the intelligent 
and excellent, but perhaps uneducated and person- 
ally uninfluential manufacturer or merchant, in a 
corps of elegant scholars and able teachers that will 
fashion the minds, the morals and the manners of 
scores, perhaps hundreds of youth in every genera- 
tion till the end of time. Institutions, like skillful 
enginery, employ natural agencies, subsidize aux- 
iliary forces, and enlist powers and resources that 
are more than human. 

Institutions educate and control individual men. 
They also fashion society, guide the church and 
govern the nation. Institutions mark and make 
civilization. Savages have no institutions, just as 
they have no machines. Just in proportion as civil- 
ization advances, institutions become more numer- 
ous and complicated, more elevated and refined. 
Every step of Christian civilization is marked and 
maintained, and in no small measure made by Chris- 
tian schools, colleges, seminaries of learning, and 
institutions of charity and benevolence. Institutions 
mark and make progress. They link the past with 
the present, and the present with the future. They 
constitute an open channel of communication — nay, 
a vital union and communion between the ages. 



14 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

They enrich each generation with the wisdom and 
virtue of previous generations, and make the acqui- 
sitions and resources of individuals the wealth and 
power of the state, the age and the race. 

All these remarks, while they are true of insti- 
tutions in general, apply with emphasis to institu- 
tions of learning, especially when sanctified by 
religion. These are emphaticnlly the great conser- 
vative and progressive, civilizing and educating, 
perpetuating and transfiguring powers of society ; 
the living channels of communication between the 
Ancient and the jVIodern, the Old World and the 
New, the individual and his age and race. They 
transmute the gold and silver and houses and lands 
of the founder into the true riches of the mind 
and heart, and then transmit them through the 
ages and nations, thus enduing them with something 
like ubiquity and immortality. They live on, though 
founders and teachers die, and even after states 
and nations have passed away ; as a tree lives on, 
though its leaves fall from year to year, — lives 
when planters and owners, one after another, pass 
away, and not unfrequently still lives Avhen the na- 
tion and race that planted it and long ate its fruit, 
have given place to others. " Aye be planting a 
tree," was a precept of Scotch wisdom — if I mis- 



COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 15 

take not, it was addressed to Jeanle Deans by her 
father in the Heart of Mid Lothian. " Aye be 
planting a tree, Jeanie ; it will be growing when 
you are asleep, it will live when you are dead. 
Those who come after you will sit under its shade 
and eat of its fruit." 80 an institution of learning 
and religion will still be growing and working 
when its founder has ceased to toil or care for it 
— will live long after he is laid in the grave ; it 
will bear fruit at all seasons of the year and pro- 
duce all manner of fruit, while, peradventure, its 
very leaves will be for the healing of the nations. 
Thus the libraries and museums at Alexandria 
survived dynasties and outlived the Grecian and 
Roman supremacy, educating all the while Jews 
and Greeks, Asiatics, Africans and Europeans, 
mediating between philosophy and revelation, and 
propagating learning and rehgion together among 
the leading minds of three continents. The schools 
of the Byzantine grammarians formed the con- 
necting link between the Ancient and the Mod- 
ern civilizations, as Constantinople itself is the 
bridge between the East and the West; and by pre- 
serving the wisdom of the Ancients, the}^ gave rise 
to the revival of learning in Modern Europe. Even 
the monasteries, with their libraries, kept aHve the 



10 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

flickering torch of learning during the Dark Ages, 
and thus helped to introduce the Reformation. For 
while institutions of learning are the conservators 
of the Old, they are no less emphatically the orig- 
inators of the New. The revival of learnino; and 
the reformation were hoth born and nurtured in 
the Universities. The earliest and greatest of the 
Reformers were monks and j^rofessors. 

But it is, above all, the office of institutions of 
learning to educate : to educate individuals and thus 
to mould and fashion society j to educate the mem- 
bers, and especially the officers of the church, and 
so to shape the character and history of the church 
itself; to educate the citizens, and especially the 
rulers of the State, and so to govern the State 
and the Nation. The}^ lay the foundations of so- 
ciety, government and religion. They are truly, 
what they are often called. Seminaries, that is, they 
sow the seeds of ideas and principles ; they shape 
and train the germs of private and public life and ac- 
tion ; they bend the twig of individual and national 
character. The higher seminaries educate the lead- 
ing minds, and thus teach and rule the masses. 
They improve and perfect agriculture, commerce, 
and all the useful arts by developing the sciences on 
which they are founded. They purify the streams 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 17 

of political, social, moral and religious life, by purify- 
ing the fountain. Christian colleges and seminaries 
formed the character of New England in the forming 
period of her history, and New England, through 
her own schools and colleges, and those which she 
is founding all over the land, is ruling the church and 
governing the nation. New England, through her 
own colleges and seminaries, and those which she is 
setting up like light-houses on foreign shores, is 
carrying on the missionary work, and laying the 
foundations of society and government, education 
and religion for " many generations " in every ^^art 
of the world. 



The honor which is due to the founders of in- 
stitutions, especially those of learning and religion, 
may be seen 

3. In the broad views, high aims, and rare wis- 
dom and excellence of character by which such 
men must be distinguished. 

The founders of states and nations, the authors 
of constitutions, codes of law, and forms of gov- 
ernment, are, of course, few ; for few have either 
the opportunity or the capacity to inaugurate such 
institutions. It is not strange, therefore, that these 
few should have been honored in all ages as the 



18 COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 

special favorites both of earth and heaven. The 
same is true also of the founders of new rites and 
forms, sects and creeds in religion. But there is 
almost unlimited opportunity to found churches, 
schools, and all the various institutions of educa- 
tion and religion, where they do not exist, or exist 
only in a very imperfect form. And there are 
more in our day than there ever were before, per- 
haps, who prize and improve their privilege in 
this resj^ect. But they are still few in compar- 
ison with the many who do not attain, or even 
aspire to it — very few, in comparison with the 
many, many wants of a growing country, an ad- 
vancing church and a perishing world. And the 
reason is obvious. It requires rare disinterested- 
* ness. and rare discernment. Few men have the 
self-denial and self-sacrifice, and perhaps fewer still 
the insight and the foresight, the far-seeing sagac- 
ity, and the far-reaching wisdom, which must be- 
long to the founders of such institutions. Most 
men are absorbed in themselves or their families, 
their relatives and friends. If they do not spend 
all their energies and resources in looking out for 
themselves and their immediate connections, their 
own church, their own party, or, at the very largest, 
their own country is the extreme limit of their 



COMMEMOKATIYE DISCOURSE. 19 

vision. At all events, there must be something local, 
sectional, partial, exclusive, about an object that 
appeals to them, or it has no charms for them; 
and the more narrow and exclusive it is, the more 
attractive it will be to nine- tenths of mankind. 

Most men are absorbed in the present. They 
never think of coming generations and future ages. 
They demand immediate results, quick returns, 
speedy harvests. Comparatively few will plant an 
orchard, or a single tree even, of which they can- 
not expect themselves to gather the fruit — still 
fewer a forest for the benefit of they know not 
what future generation. Few are capable of dis- 
cerning the oak in the acorn, and very few have 
the patience to plant the acorn and watch and 
wait for its slow development. 

Most men look only on the outward appearance, 
and can see only what is present and apparent to 
the senses. Of charitable men, the great majority 
would rather contribute for the supply of the wants 
of the body, than to the education of the immortal 
spirit, and prefer to meet the existing and perpet- 
ually recurring necessities of the poor rather than 
to seek ways and provide means for removing the 
causes of poverty. Nations built prisons long ages 
before they established schools ; and to this day 



20 COWWEMOEATIVE DISCOURSE. 

nations and individuals are slower to endow col- 
leges, than they are to found almshouses and hos- 
pitals. It is only a few men of rare discern- 
ment — 

Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, 

And mould the world unto the scheme of God — 

it is only such, who can pierce through the out- 
ward phenomena to the inward and spiritual causes, 
who can look beyond immediate and temporary 
issues to remote and permanent results; who are 
willing to plant seeds for others to gather the fruit; 
who, in short, and in the language of our text, have 
the wisdom and the power to " raise up the founda- 
tions for many generations." It is, therefore, simple 
even-handed justice to bestow rare honor on men 
of such rare wisdom and virtue ; to per2)etuate their 
memories by making them commensurate with the 
duration of the institutions which they have founded ; 
to mete out to them a height of renown, a breadth 
of esteem and a depth of veneration corresponding 
with the breadth and length and height and depth 
of their foundations, and the comprehensiveness of 
views and elevation of sentiments by which they 
were distinguished : it is right and proper that 
those who have studied and labored and prayed 
and denied themselves, and sacrificed themselves to 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 21 

educate and enrich the minds and hearts of many 
generations, should be enshrined in the grateful 
and affectionate remembrance of men from age to 
age. 

On this principle, few will receive higher honor 
than the founders of Christian colleges and semi- 
naries of learning. And among the founders of 
such institutions, few in this or in other lands, in 
ancient or in modern times, deserve a higher place 
in l^ublic estimation, than Samuel Williston. 

The community generally, and especially the nu- 
merous youth who have enjoyed the benefits of 
his wisdom and munificence, will desire to know 
something of the early life and history of a man 
who has been so successful in business and made 
such an exemplary use of his large acquisitions. 

Samuel Williston was born in Easthampton, June 
17, 1795. Thus his birthday was the twentieth 
anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. He was 
the son of Rev. Payson Williston, of Easthampton, 
who was the son of Rev. Noah Williston, of West 
Haven, Conn., who had four children, two sons, 
both of Avliom were ministers, and two daughters, 
both of whom were ministei's' wives. On his father's 
side he was own cousin to Rev. Richard Salter 



22 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

Storrs, D. D., of Braintree, and so akin, not only 
to the Willistons and Storrses, but to the Paysons, 
the Strongs, the Elys and the other illustrious clergy- 
men whose names Professor Park has recently woven 
like a garland about the brow of the Braintree 
pastor. His mother, Mrs. Sarah Birdseye Williston, 
was also the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman. 
Rev. Nathan Birdseye, of Stratford. 

His parents and grandparents were all remark- 
aljle for their longevity. His father lived to the 
age of 93, and his father to the age of 77 ; his 
mother to the age of 82, and her father to his 103d 
year — all thus exceeding the appointed limit of 
threescore years and ten, and all doubtless exem- 
plifying the fifth commandment, which Paul calls 
the first commandment with promise : " Honor thy 
father and thy mother, that thy days may be long 
upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
Mr. Williston himself had almost reached the nge 
of fourscore years; and yet with the humble piety 
of the patriarch of Israel he could and would have 
said : " Few and evil have the days of the years of 
ni}^ life been, and have not attained unto the days 
of the years of the life of my fathers in the days 
of their pilgrimage." 

His father will be remembered by some of this 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 23 

audience, as he is well remembered by the speaker, 
as one of the gentlest, kindest, loveliest men that 
ever walked the earth, too modest to know his 
own worth, too meek sometimes to assert his own 
rights, almost too honest, unsuspecting, unselfish and 
unworldly to live in such a world as this ; not a 
great man but, as every body would say, a good 
man ; not an eloquent preacher, but his life a per- 
petual and most eloquent sermon on the. golden 
rule, and his very face beaming with cheerfulness 
and benignity on all around him. No wonder he 
lived to be almost a hundred years old. I only 
wonder that such a man should die at all ; and 
when I returned from Europe and was told that 
the good old man was gone, it seemed to me that 
he must have been translated. Father Williston's 
salary never amounted to $300. He had, however, 
a settlement of <£70, with wdiich he bought a small 
farm of thirty-three acres of poor land, wdiereon he 
used to w^ork in haying time and a few hours a 
day at other seasons, to eke out a scanty subsist- 
ence for his family. 

Mrs. Williston, Samuel's mother, was born to be 
a helpmeet to such a poor minister. This excellent 
couple possessed, as husljand and wife always should 
possess, the qualities and habits that are mutually 



24 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

compensative the one to the other, so as together 
to make a perfect whole. She was as industrious 
and faithful in the parsonage as he was in the par- 
ish ; as economical as he was liberal ; as careful and 
anxious as he was cheerful and happy; a very Martha 
for household care and thrift, though not without 
Mary's part also in the one thing needful. While 
he united in himself many of the characteristics of 
both his parents, Samuel bore a striking resemblance 
in person, mind and manners to his mother. Bound 
by the customs of the age to exercise hospitality 
as well as to provide things honest in the sight of 
all men, I have heard her say that she often had 
some ministerial brother, with his whole family, stop 
for dinner, or perchance to stay over night, when 
there was not enough in the whole house to give 
them a single meal. Yet the dinner was always 
forthcoming, the table comfortable and the whole 
house in perfect order. The barrel of meal was 
never quite empty, and the cruse of oil never failed. 
Thus patient industry and strict economy were beau- 
tifully wedded to generous hospitality and Christian 
liberality in the household of the first pastor of 
Easthampton, as they always joined hand in hand 
and walked side by side in the life of his distin- 
guished son. 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 25 

A family of six children were born in that par- 
sonage, and all but one (who died in childhood) 
were brought up and educated on that salary, with 
the help which they were taught to render to them- 
selves and their parents — brought up to habits of 
industry and economy, and educated in the prin- 
ciples of virtue and piety ; and now there is 
wealth enough in the family to cover every inch 
of that poor farm over with dollars. Of his two 
brothers, one was Dea. J. P. Williston of North- 
ampton, the reformer and philanthropist, whose hu- 
mane and Christian charities, beginning at home, 
compassed the globe, dropping like the rain and 
distilling lilve the dew on the dry and thirsty land. 
The other, Dea. N. B. Williston, president of a bank 
in Brattleboro, Vt., a man of like spirit with his 
brothers, is the only surviving meml^er of the family. 
Of his two sisters, one was the wife of J. D. Whit- 
ney, Esq., of Northampton, and the mother of the 
distinguished professors of that name ; the other was 
the mother of the late Mrs. Dr. Adams of Boston. 

Samuel, though the third child that was born to 
his parents, was the oldest son that grew up to man- 
hood. The trials and triumphs of his education and 
his early business, and the story of his marriage, 
constitute a romance in real life of rare interest 



26 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

and pathos. He began to go to school very yoimg, 
and attended the district school in his native place, 
summer and winter, till he was ten years old ; then 
in the winter only till he was sixteen, at which age 
his schooling, as it was called, that is, his instruc- 
tion in the common school, which then scarcely ex- 
tended beyond reading, writing and the rudiments 
of arithmetic, ceased altogether. He began to work 
on a farm at the early age of ten, in the al)sence 
of his father on a missionary tour of three months 
in the State of New York. This first work was 
done on the farm, and under the direction of a 
good deacon in his father's church, Dea. Solomon 
Lyman, whose memory he always held in high 
esteem and veneration. After this he worked on a 
farm every summer till he was sixteen, sometimes 
on his father's, sometimes for some of his parish- 
ioners, and the last of these summers out of town 
in Westhampton, where his wages were $7 a month. 
These facts in his early life are not only of interest 
by way of contrast with his subsequent prosperity, 
but he was wont to attach great importance to these 
early labors as training him to habits of industry, 
and still more as laying the foundations of that 
bodily health and strength without which he was 
persuaded he never could have accomplished his 
life-work. 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 27 

After he ceased going to school, he studied to 
some extent privately with his father, though 
only in the winter, for he was obliged to work 
in the summer. He loved study and longed for 
a liberal education. But he saw no way, in which 
he could obtain the requisite means. He there- 
fore went into a clothier's shop belonging to a 
brother-in-law in Rochester, Vt., where he la- 
bored the greater part of two winters, till he 
became master of the art to such an extent 
that he was entrusted with the charge of the 
shop. Meanwhile he lost no tim^, spent his even- 
ings in reading, and made the most of all the 
means of self-education within his reach. His de- 
sire for a better education being thus increased, 
on his return from Vermont, late in the winter 
of 1813-14, he entered Westfield Academy. But 
his funds were exhausted before he had com- 
pleted a single term, and he came home again 
to study with his father. Still encouraged by 
his teachers and his parents, that where there was 
a will there was a way, and that some way would be 
found for him yet to go through college, he now 
began to study Latin, which he pursued first with 
his father and then with Rev. Mr. Gould, of 
Southampton. In the summer of 1814, learning 



28 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

that there Avere funds at Andover for the aid of 
indigent students, and attracted by the excellence 
of the institution, he went to Phillips Academy, 
then under the principal charge of Kev. John 
Adams, and enjoying the instructions also of Mr. 
Hawes, afterwards Dr. Hawes, of the Centre Church 
in Hartford, Conn. It took more time and more 
money then to go to Andover than it does now. 
Young Williston could not afford to go by stage, 
then the only public conveyance. His father 
therefore carried him one day's ride to Brookfield, 
where, according to the hospitable and ministe- 
rial usages of the times, they lodged at the house 
of the pastor. The next day he walked to 
Worcester. Fatigue then compelled him to ride 
to Boston. From Boston he set out on foot again 
for Andover, but caught a ride a part of the way 
on a farmer's wagon. He had no trunk, no valise 
or carpet-bag; all he had with him, pretty much 
everything he had in the world, was tied up in a 
bundle. At Andover, for the sake of economy, 
though not disliking the long walk for its own 
sake and for exercise, he boarded a mile and a half 
from the Academy. Yet he was never tardy. He 
never failed in a recitation. He wont there to do 
his best. He always did do the best that he could. 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 29 

He obeyed all the rules of the school. He ex- 
celled in his studies. He went up at a step from 
the Epitome of Sacred History over the class in 
Viri Eomae to the class in Selectae a Sacris et 
Profanis, and on examination at the close of his 
first term, he was placed upon the foundation as 
a charity scholar. Now he had reached a point 
from which he thought he could see the goal of 
his ambition, a college education. Now he was 
satisfied and regarded his fortune as made, or at 
least quite secure. But severer trials awaited him. 
He had not been there a year when his eye-sight 
failed him, and he was obliged to leave. For two 
years, now, from the spring of 1815 to that of 
1817, he vibrated between labor on the farm and 
a clerkship in a store, passing the larger part of 
the time in the store, but with intervals of two 
or three months on the farm, suffering all the 
w^hile from weakness, inflammation and incessant 
pain in the eyes, till at length he gave up all 
hope of being or doing anything that could sat- 
isfy his ambition. He made up his mind — this 
is the way in which he was in the habit of speaking 
of it — that he must be a farmer, and a poor man 
at that. These years, however, were by no means 
lost to him. In the store of Justin Ely of West 



oO COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

Springfield, and still more in the large "wholesale 
establishment of Francis Child of New York city, 
witli whom he spent a year, he was acquiring that 
knowledge of men and things, and forming those 
ideas and habits of business which were after- 
wards to be of such essential service to him in 
the management of his own affairs. Moreover it 
was during this period, imder the discipline of re- 
peated disappointments and sore trials, accompa- 
nied by the effectual teaching of the Holy Spirit, 
that he began life anew as a Christian, and after 
a severe inward struggle, which began soon after 
leaving Andover and ended in submission and peace 
just before going to New York, he consecrated 
himself publicly to the service of God as a mem- 
ber of the Presbyterian church under the pastoral 
care of Rev. Dr. Spring. 

In the spring of 1817, at the age of 22, baffled 
in all his plans by the failure of his eyes, and 
almost disheartened by the double disappointment 
consequent upon it, first in regard to a college 
education, and then in his experiments in the mer- 
cantile line, he came back to his father and pro- 
posed to him to go into the farming business; the 
father to furnish the farm and the capittd, and the 
son to manage it and do the work. The father 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 31 

reluctantly consented, invested some four or five 
hundred dollars from his father's estate, in the 
purchase of land, taking the deed of it in his own 
name, and then borrowed money for the purchase 
of more land and imj)lements of husbandry. Thus 
unpromising was the commencement of Mr. Willis- 
ton's business life, without ca23ital, almost without 
anything that he could call his own, and having 
run his father in debt for the very tools with 
w^hich he was to do his work. He continued to 
follow farming as his business four years, enlarging 
the farm and extending the business, varying it 
also by raising sheep and growing fine wool, till he 
became, for that place and those times, quite a 
large farmer and wool-grower. He worked on the 
farm himself, however, only in the summer. In 
the winter, he betook himself to that unfailing re- 
source of intelligent and aspiring youth of both 
sexes in Yankee land, teaching school. The first 
winter, he taught in the North district in East- 
hampton, for $16 a month, boarding himself and 
walking more than a mile to and from school, and 
doing all the chores at home, morning and evening. 
The next year, he taught the large scholars in the 
Center district at Southampton, taking, in the 
spring, the place which had been fdlod l)y a col- 



32 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

lege student in the ^vintel•. The following winter, 
he taught five months in Northampton. He next 
taught, in the years 1820-21, for fourteen months 
consecutively, the grammar school in Springfield, 
at the same time managing the farm and carrying 
on the work with hired help, and the aid of his 
younger brothers. During the winter of 1821-22, 
he taught a select school in Easthampton. 

In the spring of 1822, (May 27,) he was married 
to Miss Emily Graves, daughter of Elnathan Graves, 
a respectable farmer, in moderate circumstances, in 
the neighboring town of Williamsburg. They had 
been engaged three j^ears previous, the marriage 
being delayed from economical and prudential con- 
siderations. Partly to illustrate the simplicity of 
the times, and partly to show his own limited 
means, 1 have heard him say that he was married 
in a coat Avhich he had worn two years for Sun- 
days and holidays, and tliat they took no bridal 
tour or excursion after the marriage. Or, to tell 
the story more exactly, their only bridal excursion 
was to Rum Brook, at the foot of Mount Tom, in 
Easthampton, where they had a bottle of wine and 
some plain cake for their entertainment. Almost 
haK a century afterwards, happening to call upon 
them on the forty-eighth anniversary of their mar- 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 33 

riage, I found them preparing to celebrate it at 
the same place in the same beautiful and simple 
way. Are the brides and grooms of our day, who 
think they must cross the ocean, or mayhap go 
round the world for their bridal tour — are they 
wiser or happier than this worthy couple ? He 
brought his wife home to the house of his father, 
and the two families lived together under the same 
roof in beautiful harmony and mutual love for 
twenty-one years, only enlarging the old parson- 
age and beautifying the grounds to correspond with 
the growth of business and their increasing pros- 
perity. 

He still taught one year, after being married, in 
the Central district school in Easthampton, thus mak- 
ing five winters in all, besides the entire year of his 
teaching in Springfield. Meanwhile the farming 
business went on, enlarging, as we have said, and 
on the whole prospering. But he was obliged to 
run in debt at the outset. This debt was still 
further increased for the sake of enlarging the 
business. He had invested in land and sheep, 
f 1,800, most of which was borrowed capital. His 
first crop of wool was lost through the failure of 
the purchaser. Two or three hundred dollars a 
year was all that could be saved for repairing this 

6 



d4 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

loss and reducing this burden of indebtedness. 
Mrs. Williston has remarked, that at this time it 
was a daily subject of prayer at the domestic altar 
that God would open to him ways and means by 
which he might obtain a competence for himself 
and family. And now, at length — doubtless in an- 
swer to those very prayers, and as the result too 
of the severe discipline to which he had been sub- 
jected — the way was to be opened. And the re- 
lief Avas to come through the wife whom God had 
given him to be not only his companion and help- 
meet in general, but his wise counselor and his 
good genius in that very thing which he had so 
often made a subject of special prayer. Mrs. Wil- 
liston had never felt aJjle to keep the help she 
needed in housekeeping, nor to give what she 
wished in aid of charitable objects. While looking 
about for relief and enlargement in these particu- 
lars, she found that her mother had been in the 
habit of making covered buttons for her own fam- 
ily, and a small surplus for sale to others. She 
took up the business at once on a somewhat larger 
scale. The first package of Inittons Avhich she 
made, she took to Mr. David Whitney, of North- 
ampton, (long the Treasurer of the Hampshire 
County Missionary Society,) as a contribution of 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 35 

the first-fruits to' the cause of missions; and Pres- 
ident Humphrey, happening in about that time, 
became the first purchaser. Little did he or she 
think, that there was the germ of WiUiston Sem- 
inary and WiUiston College. 

A button machine ought to be graven on the 
seal of one, if not both of these institutions ; and 
the founders should be represented by a double 
bust of Mr. and Mrs. WiUiston, not set back to 
back like some of the old Greek sculptures, but put- 
ting their heads and hands together in the manufac- 
ture of covered buttons. Then if Christian art could 
in some way represent the work of missions and 
the- kingdom and glory of God in full view before 
their eyes, illumining their pathway, irradiating 
their persons, and making their upturned faces 
shine with the light of heaven, the picture Avoidd 
be quite complete. 

But to return to our narrative. The second pack- 
age was sent to Arthur Tappan, of New York, who 
immediately contracted for twenty-five gross at two 
dollars a gross. Fifty dollars ! Never in all their 
subsequent wealth did they feel so rich as when they 
received that order from the firm of Arthur Tappan. 
The first buttons Mrs. WiUiston made with her own 
hands. Then she employed other hands to work for 



36 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

her in the house. Next she began to give out but- 
tons to be made in neighboring families. Mr. Willis- 
ton soon perceived that here was a field of enterprise 
wider and more promising than farming, and that 
instead of making her time and toil merely subsid- 
iary to his work, he might better make his minis- 
ter to hers. It was in 1826, when he was already 
more than thirty years of age, that the beginning 
was made of this new undertaking. In 1827, he 
went to New York, found customers, received 
orders, and went back to extend his business. 
Soon he Avent in like manner to Philadelphia, Balti- 
more and Boston, and established agencies in all the 
principal cities of the United States. The business 
grew rapidly, and it was only a short time, before he 
had more than a thousand families at work making 
buttons for him, through all that circle of towns, 
thirty or forty miles in diameter, of which East- 
hampton was the center. Auxiliary to the button 
business, he opened a store, and, for a number of 
years, carried on quite a large business for the 
country, in the sale of dry goods, his first clerk 
being Mr. Knight, and Mrs. Williston his first book- 
keeper. 

The manufacture went on in this way by hand, 
employing thousands of busy and skillful lingers 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 37 

in a constantly extending circle of private families, 
and rewarding their industry with a corresponding 
increase of the comforts and elegancies of life, 
for ten or a dozen years, when Providence opened 
the way for a still greater improvement and en- 
largement. In one of his visits to New York, 
Mr. Williston found there some buttons of English 
manufacture, made without thread, without needle, 
I had almost said without fingers, in short, mani- 
festly made by machinery. He took these buttons 
to the Messrs. Joel and Josiah Hayden, who were 
then just beginnmg to be know^n as ingenious and 
enterprising mechanics in Williamsburg, and pro- 
posed to furnish the capital, sell the goods and 
divide the profits equally, if they would discover 
the process, get up the machinery and manufac- 
ture the buttons. They entered with characteris- 
tic zeal and energy upon the experiment, and 
worked on patiently with hands and brains for 
years before their labors were crowned with 
complete success. It was a full year before they 
could make a button. When they had succeeded 
to some extent, they derived great assistance from 
a colored man Avho had been an employee in an 
English factory and knew the machinery and the 
process. Whether the memory of this timely ser- 



38 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

vice was, in any measure, the cause of their Hfe-long 
friendship for the colored race, or whether Provi- 
dence sent this man to serve them in return for 
what it was ah'eady in their hearts to do for the 
cause of humanity and to furnish them the means 
for more enlarged philanthropy in coming years, 
I do not know. But I can not ])ut see in this 
incident, as well as in the connection of Arthur 
Tappan and President Humphrey with tliis enter- 
prise, not only interesting coincidences, but illus- 
trations of that almost poetical justice and fitness 
which the Greeks were so fond of noting, and 
which no close observer can fail to mark, some- 
times at least, in the providence of God. 

The perfecting of this machinery and the suc- 
cessful carrying on of the manufacture made the 
fortunes of both parties. It was the making — 
it was, at least, the beginning of Haydenville. It 
has since done the same service to Easthampton. 
Mr. Williston used often to speak of the perfect 
harmony and happiness of his business relations 
with Mr. Hay den — a harmony which was ex- 
pressed and increased by their traveling in Europe 
together, and at length still farther cemented by 
a marriage connection between the families. This 
harmonious co-operation continued without interrup- 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 39 

tion, twelve years, till in 1847, by mutual consent, 
the partnership was dissolved, and, at once for the 
personal convenience of Mr. Williston and for the 
benefit of his native place, the button business was 
transferred to Easthampton. 

We have dwelt on these earlier years of Mr. 
Williston's business life with a particularity which 
may perhaps require some apology. He was a 
business man, and it is as an able and success- 
ful business man that w^e wish to know his his- 
tory. These earlier years of his life are unknown 
to the younger portion of the community, and 
have more or less faded from the memory of the 
older inhabitants. While they developed his char- 
acter and formed his habits, they illustrate also 
the providence of God. While they set before us 
a remarkable example of patience and perseverance, 
of faith and hope in God, finally triumphing and 
rejoicing in the manifest blessing of heaven, they 
forcibly teach this great lesson, that we should 
never despise small things — that nothing is in re- 
ahty small, since things apparently the smallest may 
lead to the greatest results. 

It was when he w\as a little over forty that 
Mr. Williston began to lay "foundations" and build 
not only for himself but for his native town and 



40 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

for the larger public. In 1837 he bore a promi- 
nent part in the erection of the house of worship 
now occupied by the first church in Easthampton. 
In 1841 he established Williston Seminary. In 
1843 he built his own house. Early in 1845 he 
founded the Williston Professorship of Rhetoric 
and Oratory m Amherst College. Later in the 
same year, he spent six months in traveling in 
Europe. In the winter of 1846-7 he founded the 
Graves Professorship, now the WiUiston Professor- 
ship of Greek, and one-half of the Hitchcock Pro- 
fessorship of Natural Theology and Geology in 
Amherst College, thus making in all the sum of 
$50,000, which he had already given for perma- 
nent foundations in that institution. 

It was in 1847 that he removed his business 
from Haydenville to Easthampton. From that time 
to the present, we need not dwell on the details 
of his private life, for they are fresh in the memory 
of us all. I need not remind you how he went 
on adding factory to factory and one species of 
business to another, house to house, block to block, 
and even village to village, till from one of the 
smallest, Easthampton has become one of the larg- 
est and most populous towns in Hampshire county. 
I need not tell you how he has built churches, 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 41 

and enlarged the grounds and multiplied the edi- 
fices of Williston Seminary, and increased the funds 
and the faculty of the Semmary and of Amherst 
College, and extended and diffused his donations for 
public, charitable, educational and religious objects, 
corresponding with the increase of his wealth and 
the demands of the times, till his name has become 
identified with all the great benevolent enterprises 
of the age, and his influence is felt all over the 
world. 

Mr. Williston has filled not a few posts of honor 
and trust. He was a member of the Lower House 
of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1841, and a 
member of the Senate in 1842 and 1843. He was 
elected to the Legislature as an Anti-Slavery Whig, 
and might doubtless have continued to occupy and 
adorn public life, if he had not, after three years' 
legislative service, declined a re-election. In poli- 
tics, he has always been known as belonging to the 
school of progress and reform. He was usually in 
advance of his party and of the age, a full believer 
in the doctrme of the higher law, and the applica- 
tion of Christian ethics to the legislative, executive 
and judiciary departments of the government, and 
therefore sometimes charged with political heresy 
and fanaticism, though he was never an impracti- 

6 



42 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

cable or an extremist. In the great struggle for 
the integrity and existence of the nation, he was 
ever among the firmest supporters of the govern- 
ment, and among the most strenuous advocates for 
the extinction of slavery as the chief cause of all 
our troubles. While a member of the Legislature, 
in 1841, he was chosen by that body a trustee of 
Amherst College. For thirty-three years, the aver- 
age duration of human life, and throughout one 
entire generation, he has not only been a member 
of the Corporation, but during the larger part of 
these years a member also of the Prudential Com- 
mittee and often of special committees on build- 
ings and business matters of the utmost import- 
ance, and until the recent failure of his health he 
was from principle an unfailing attendant of ordi- 
nary and extraordinary meetings of the board, and 
unsparing not only of his money, of which he gave 
during his life a hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
from time to time as it Avas wanted, and would do 
the most good, but also of his time, which, for a 
man of business and wealth, it is often far more diffi- 
cult to give than money. For the same number of 
years he has been not only trustee, but president 
of the trustees of Williston Seminary, and with 
only two exceptions, the one occasioned by sickness 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 43 

and the other by absence from the country, he has 
presided in all the meetings. He has been the act- 
ing treasurer also of the Seminary, and has watched 
over all its external and internal affairs with the 
same wise and careful personal supervision which 
he has given to his business. Appointed by the 
Governor and Council one of the first trustees of 
the State Reform School, when that office was no 
sinecure, he was of great service in erecting build- 
ings, improving the farm and inaugurating the insti- 
tution. He was one of the first trustees of Mount 
Holyoke Seminary, of which he helped to lay the 
foundations, and in which he ever felt a lively 
interest. He was a corporate member of the Ameri- 
can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
and for many years as constant in attendance on 
its meetings as he was in contributions to its funds. 

The business corporations, manufacturing com- 
panies, banks, railways, gas and water power com- 
panies in Easthampton, Northampton, Holyoke and 
elsewhere, in which he was a leading corporator, 
and usually president, are too numerous to men- 
tion. 

Mr. Williston's domestic life was marked by great 
trials as well as great blessings, and had a most 
important bearing on his character and history. For 



44 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

four years after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Wil- 
liston lived without children. In 1831, they lost 
two children, then three and a half and one and a 
half years old, by scarlet fever. In 1837, they were 
called to experience the same deep affliction again 
in the loss, and by the same disease, of two children 
who had reached the age respectively of five and a 
half and three and a half. They were thus written 
childless twice in the space of six years, and have 
never since had children of their own. But they 
have adopted the children of missionaries and chil- 
dren who had been bereaved of their parents, whom 
they have reared and educated as their own ; and 
few families, probably, have enjoyed more domestic 
happiness than theirs. And what is more, schools 
and churches and charitable societies without num- 
ber have become their adopted children, have been 
nursed and cherished by them with a father's and 
a mother's love and made heirs to their inheritance. 
It was during the sickness of his last child that Mr. 
Williston, feeling that he had not done his whole 
duty as a steward of the Lord's property, conse- 
crated himself anew to his service, set apart the 
principal and interest of a considerable investment 
for benevolent purposes, and thus entered on a 
new epoch in his Christian life. 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 45 

The son and grandson of parents and grandpa- 
rents, who were not only Christians but ministers 
of the gospel, Mr. Williston early received the 
most careful Christian culture and training. He 
read the Bible through a great many times in his 
childhood and youth — he usually read it through 
every year. He was taught the Assembly's Cate- 
chism, and not only said it from memory to his par- 
ents at home, but according to the usage of the times, 
recited it in school every Saturday forenoon, and 
repeated it from beginning to end, over and over 
again in the church. He observed the Sabbath 
with great strictness, and carefully avoided pro- 
fanity and immorality of every kind. He not only 
prayed in secret but led the family devotions at 
his boarding-place in Andover, before he cherished 
any hope of his personal interest in the salvation 
by Christ. We might have expected such a young 
man, so moral, upright and amiable, to enter upon 
a religious life, without any great conflict or deep 
conviction of sin. But this was far from beins: 
the case. He was often much exercised about per- 
sonal religion, but on his return from Andover, 
disappointed in his hopes of education, and thwarted 
in his plans for life, he passed through a severe 
mental struggle, came under deep conviction of sin, 



46 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

felt himself to be justly condemned by the law of 
God, and, in himself, utterly ruined and undone ; 
and lie continued in this state for months. It was 
almost a year before he became clear in his belief 
that he was a real Christian. There was no par- 
ticular time to which he coidd point as the begin- 
ning of his religious life. Light and peace gradually 
dawned upon his soul. Sudden and rapturous joy 
was no part of his Christian experience. This 
great event — for so he regarded it, though there was 
nothing very marked about the time or the manner 
of it — took place in 1816. Going to New York soon 
after, he heard with great satisfaction, the preaching 
of Dr. Romeyn, Dr. Mason and Dr. Spring, and in 
the winter of 1816-17, he became a member of Dr. 
Spring's church. When he left the city, he trans- 
ferred his relation to the church under his father's 
care in Easthampton, and in 1852 he went off with 
others to form the Payson Church. He was for many 
3'ears a member of the committee, and a deacon in 
the First Church, and in the Payson Church he held 
both those offices from the beginning. He never 
felt that he could serve God by proxy, however 
numerous might be the agents whom he supported 
in the Christian work ; and munificent as his con- 
tributions were to the maintenance and propagation 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 47 

of the gospel, lie never thought or desired by this 
to purchase any exemption from personal service. 
At home and abroad, till the age of threescore 
years and more, he rarely failed to attend three 
services on the Sabbath, and the remainder of the 
day he scrupulously spent in religious reading, 
meditation and prayer. At home or abroad, he 
never traveled or visited, wrote letters or trans- 
acted any business on the Lord's day; never spent 
the day, or any portion of it, in walking, talking, 
riding, in any mere recreation or amusement. 
When he was all ready to commence his voyage 
to Europe, the vessel on which he had engaged 
his passage, and expected to sail about the middle 
of the week, was detained two or three days by 
a violent storm. Sabbath morning the weather 
was fair, and the captain, crew and passengers 
were all eager and impatient to spread sails. But 
Mr. Williston refused to embark on the Lord's 
day, although, according to usage, he thereby for- 
feited his passage money as well as delayed his 
passage. The captain, however, at length yielded 
to his convictions and convenience ; they sailed 
3Ionday morning, and reached Liverpool in ad- 
vance of all the vessels that sailed from New York 
on the previous Sunday. On the same principle. 



48 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

he chose to be left at a comfortless way station 
midway over the Alps at midnight Saturday night, 
rather than to continue his journey on the Sabbath. 
He reverenced the Sabbath and the sanctuary. He 
w^as planted in the house of the Lord, and he flour- 
ished in the courts of our God. 

If we turn now from this outline of his private, 
public and religious life to a consideration of some 
of the chief elements of his character and useful- 
ness, the first question which will spontaneousl}'^ 
arise in most minds will be, what was the secret 
of his success in business. 

The secret of what he did lay in what he waSy 
as is always true, especially of men who do much, 
and the foundation of what he was, was laid, of 
course, in the nature which God gave him. He 
inherited from his parents a good physical and 
mental constitution. He had a healthy body, an 
attractive person, and a well-balanced mind. In child- 
hood and youth his mind and manners were culti- 
vated in good schools, but still more in the best 
society; for there is no better society than that 
which gathers about the fireside of a New Eng- 
land pastor and forms the circle in which he 
moves. He always mourned his loss of a classical 
education, and was disposed to depreciate himself 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 49 

undiilj in comparison with educated men. This 
felt want of the education of the schools was in- 
tensely aggravated in his own view by the early 
failure and perpetual weakness of his eye-sight. 
Never after he was of ao^e was he able to read 
through a book or an article. Never during all 
his business and public life could he read his own 
correspondence, a newspaper, or even a chapter of 
the Bible. But he triumphed over all these ad- 
verse circumstances, and wrested w^isdom, in spite 
of fate, from the very clutches of necessity. Mrs. 
Williston read everything to him and for him ; the 
ear took the place of the eye, oral of written in- 
struction, somewhat as in the primitive ages; he 
remembered whatever he heard, and was remark- 
ably well informed on all subjects of general and 
practical interest. He educated himself by the 
discipline of necessity, and the rub and polish of 
intelligent work, and the attritions of business, and 
association with cultivated men and women, and 
observation of men and things, and travel in his 
own country and in foreign lands, and faithful im- 
provement of every opportunity for learning and 
general culture. Thus he acquired an education that 
fitted him better than any mere book knowledge 
for the work to which he was called, and qualified 

7 



50 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

him, not indeed to shine in the pulpit, or on the 
platform, or in the popular assembly (for he was 
neither born nor trained to be an orator), but to 
adorn private, social and public life. 

A benignant countenance, a commanding and yet 
winning presence, gentle speech and courteous man- 
ners were no unimportant elements of his power and 
influence. He was a gentleman, not onh^ in the par- 
lor and the social circle, but in the 'office, in the 
bank, on the street, and in all his business relations. 
His gentle manners and winning ways attracted 
strangers, won the hearts of his workmen, and pre- 
disposed merchants and manufacturers to transact 
business with him. He had jui eye for beauty. He 
cultivated a taste for architecture and works of art. 
As his means enlarged, his style of dress, his 
manner of living, his house and furniture and 
grounds were attractive as became a gentleman in 
his station, and he adorned his native place with 
public edifices in which utility and beauty were 
most happily combined. 

The habits of economy and industry, in which 
he was brought up from his childhood, and to 
which he adhered through all his subsequent life, 
were among the most obvious and direct means 
of his prosperity. He never wasted either time 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 51 

or money. At the summit of his wealth and hb- 
eraUty, he was never above the practice of econ- 
omy ; and with good reason, for economy was the 
very foundation both of his wealth and his liber- 
ality. Even so our Lord, after feeding thousands 
miraculously w^ith a few loaves and fishes, bade his 
disciples " Gather up the fragments that remain, 
that nothing may be lost." He was always a man 
of indefatigable industry. In his early life, he 
worked hard with his hands; in middle life and 
old age, he worked equally hard with his mind. 
Like the celebrated painter, he mixed all his colors 
with brains. Till he had passed the prime of life, 
he used to rise at five and breakfast at six ; then 
followed the devotions of the family and the closet, 
which he never omitted, however great the pres- 
sure and hurry of business. Then he would fol- 
low his business, or rather lead it, all day long, 
working as many hours as any day laborer; and 
in the evening, he was always busy answering 
letters, reading newspapers and useful books, or 
rather hearing them read, and devoting to the im- 
provement of his mind, and the acquisition of use- 
ful knowledge, every moment that was not due to 
domestic, social and religious duty. He was never 
too old to learn, and never too rich to be industrious. 



52 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

This indefatigable industry was accompanied and 
made effectual by indomitable perseverance and 
unconquerable resolution. He always considered and 
reconsidered any new enterprise of importance be- 
fore lie undertook it, weighed it carefully in his 
own mind and in his own room, where there was 
nothing to disturb his dehberations, consulted oth- 
ers if it was a matter that admitted and required 
consultation, and took counsel with God in re- 
peated seasons of prayer. When he had thus de- 
cided upon an undertaking, he executed it with 
unhesitating promptness and irresistible firmness. 
Nothing could then stop him but absolute impos- 
sibilities. There was no such word as cant in his 
vocabular}^, but I uill, or I'll try, was on every page 
of his dictionary. If the roof of the seminary build- 
ing blew oft* in the night, the next morning the 
men and the materials were engaged, perchance on 
hand, for replacing it. If the church was burned 
to the ground, or almost demolished by the fall 
of the steeple, nothing was to be done but to re- 
build it at once in better style than ever. If a 
mill-dam was swept away the first time the water 
was let in, and the quicksands rendered it im- 
practicable to rebuild it on the same spot, it 
could and should be constructed a little higher up 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 00 

the stream ; and it was done at an expense of 
twenty or thirty thousand dollars ; but it brought 
him hundreds of thousands in the end. These two 
things, caution and deliberation in deciding, and 
then promptness and firmness in executing — these 
two things he was accustomed to consider the 
main secret of his success in business. 

There are two other things which stand in a 
similar relation to each other, which I cannot but 
think, were scarcely less conducive to his great 
prosperity. The first is, that he attended to his 
own business. He not only oversaw and directed 
the whole, but he looked with his own eyes into 
the minutest details. Perhaps he carried this to 
an unnecessary minuteness that was exhausting to 
himself and tedious to his factors and agents. I 
have heard this criticism. But he was fully per- 
suaded that it was essential to success. And Frank- 
lin seems to have been of the same opinion : 

He that hy the plow would thrive, 
Himself must either hold or drive. 

Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take 
care of themselves. I have no doubt that the con- 
stant presence of his eye and his hand was worth 
thousands of dollars to his business, every year, to 



64 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

the very last year of his life. The value of that 
constant presence and intluence not only to his 
business, but to the town, to the Seminary, and 
even to Amherst College, we can fully appreciate, 
like many of our richest blessings, only by its 
loss. I am confident we shall all estimate it far 
higher ten years hence than we do to-day. 

While he was thus watchful and careful in the 
supervision of his own affairs, in beautiful equipoise 
with this, like those centripetal and centrifugal 
forces which preserve the equilibrium of the ma- 
terial universe, he was not less remarkable for the 
wisdom and skill with which he selected and em- 
ployed the agency of others. He had a rare power 
of discerning character. He seldom mistook in his 
judgment of men. I have myself had a great 
deal to do with him in canvassing the merits of 
teachers and preachers ; and I have always been 
struck with his wisdom and discernment. In the 
sphere of his own business, his judgment would, 
of course, be still more unerring. He alwaj^s 
thought himself fortunate — I think he was also wise 
— in obtaining the very best men, at once capable 
and faithful, for partners, superintendents, agents 
and employees of every kind in his business. And 
this, in my opinion, was among the main secrets of 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 55 

his success. It always has been a chief element of 
power and greatness in the history of great men. 
It is only a few things, at most, that any man can 
see directly with his own eyes and do with his 
own hands. The rest he must accomplish through 
the agency of other men. He therefore who knows 
how to find the right men and put them in the 
right place — as Socrates, that profound thinker and 
observer of human affairs, has remarked — he it is 
that accomplishes almost without fail whatever he 
undertakes. 

He not only found superior men to co-operate 
with him, but what was more, what was a striking 
proof of his own greatness, he developed them, he 
trained them, he made them — made them not merely 
his agents but his partners and coadjutors, and, like 
those institutions which he founded, left them to 
live when he was dead, to work when his work 
w^as done, to continue and extend his business, to 
widen and deepen his influence, to beautify and 
build up Easthampton, to support and strengthen 
Payson Church, and, in person and through those 
whom they in like manner shall raise up, to foster 
and found colleges, seminaries, missions and char- 
itable institutions in this vicinity, in this and in 
other lands, that shall not only last but live and 



56 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

do good and bless the church and the world till 
time shall be no more. 

Besides the wise and good men whom he 
thus trained and educated, he had two silent part- 
ners that were worth more to him and to his 
business than they all. The best partners any man 
can have — and every good man may have them — 
are a prudent, pious, loving wife, and a wise, kind, 
guarding and guiding Heavenly Father. The man 
who always takes counsel with the unerring intui- 
tions and Christian impulses of a good wife, and with 
the providence, word and spirit of God, will seldom, 
if ever, go astray, and can hardly fail to be a 
wise, prosperous, useful and happy man. And 
such, I need not say, was the supreme felicity of 
Samuel Williston. He could meet the challenge 
of the wise man in the last chapter of Proverbs 
triumphantly, and answer his question without a 
moment's hesitation : " Who can find a virtuous 
woman ? for her price is far above rubies. The 
heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so 
that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do 
him good and not evil all the days of her life. She 
seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with 
her hands. She is like the merchants' ships, she 
bringeth her food from afar. Her husband is 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 57 

known in the gates, when he sitteth among the 
elders of the land. She maketh fine linen and 
selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the mer- 
chants. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and 
in her tono;ue is the law of kindness. Her chil- 
dren rise up and call her blessed ; her husband 
also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have 
done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." That 
picture does not need to be labeled. 

With this accurate knowledge of men, was as- 
sociated a no less discriminating and correct dis- 
cernment of things. He kept himself well informed 
in matters of business, politics, morals and religion. 
He observed, he read, he inquired, he reflected. 
And when he acted, it was with such an insight 
into the present and such a foresight of the fu- 
ture, that he rarely made a mistake in his judg- 
ment of markets, stocks and prices : and business 
men who knew him were not afraid to buy when 
Mr. Williston bought, and thought it wise to sell 
when Mr. Williston sold. The wisdom and success 
with which he conducted his large business amid 
all the conflicting currents, quicksands and breakers 
of peace and war, of commercial changes and po- 
litical revolutions, till he had reached the age of 
three-score years and ten, show a capacity that 



58 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

could have guided the ship of state or the finances 
of the nation, if the helm had been committed to 
his hands. 

With these high intellectual endowments, he 
united that integrity and fidelity to all his engage- 
ments which alone can inspire confidence, and there- 
fore Avhich alone can ensure lasting prosperity. 
Almost at the beginning of his business in the great 
cities, he had gained such a character for honesty 
and honor, that large merchants would give him a 
carte hhmche for their orders, and ask no questions 
about prices, saying, '- You know best — look at our 
stock — see what we want, and supply the deficiency." 
And this character he never forfeited. All who had 
dealings with him knew that he would be faithful to 
his engagements, and would expect them to be 
prompt in the fulfillment of theirs. Scrupulously 
honest and conscientious in the minutest details of 
business himself, he acted in strict conformity with 
the golden rule, when he required the same minute 
exactness of others in business transactions. Thus 
he inculcated honesty, while, at the same time, he 
inspired confidence, in all around him. 

But he was more than conscientious. He aimed to 
be Christian in the management of his business. 
From the time already mentioned when he renewed 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. ' 59 

his consecration to the service of God, he regarded 
his time and talents and property and business, as no 
longer his own. The business was the Lord's, and 
he was merely the agent. The Lord Avas the owner 
of the property, and he was only a trustee, an over- 
seer, a steward intrusted with the care and manage- 
ment of it. Of course, he felt bound to conduct the 
business in accordance with the will of the owner, 
to pay over the income at his order, and to hold 
the principal subject to his disposal. This, therefore, 
he made the matter of his daily, and almost hourly 
study, meditation and prayer. No other subject 
occasioned him so much thought and anxiety. Be- 
sides his regular hours of prayer, morning and even- 
ing, he had his special seasons of prayer and self- 
examination every week ; he asked wisdom from on 
high in ejaculatory petitions many times a day, and 
took counsel with God and with wise and good men 
at every suitable opportunity, and all with reference 
to this more than any, and perhaps all other ques- 
tions: How shall I best serve God in the use of 
the property, and in the conduct of the business 
with which he has intrusted me. And when Ave have 
taken into account all the other elements that en- 
tered directly and obviously into the result, I cannot 
doubt that we must reckon in the special blessing of 



60 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

Heaven on this method of conducting his business 
as the grand secret of his prosperity. Such, at any 
rate, was the light in which he was always in the 
habit of looking at the subject. 

Mr. Williston was not naturally more generous 
than other men. It was the regenerating, and sanc- 
tifying grace of God, that made him such a liberal 
giver. When, in their poverty, his parents persisted 
in giving for charitable objects, Samuel, wlio was 
toiling on the farm for the support of the family, 
and who was not then a converted man, sometimes 
doubted if it Avere not an excess of charity. More 
than once I have heard him say that he thought 
it hard when his father subscribed a few dollars to 
aid the college to Avhich he has, himself, given 
hundreds of thousands. He had a natural love of 
money, and the value which he attached to it was 
enhanced by the want of it which he experienced 
in early life, and still further strengthened by the 
very nature and processes of the business in which 
the foundations of his fortune were laid. When 
he began to accumulate rapidly, ambition, of which 
he was by no means destitute, would most naturally 
have conspired with the desire of accumulation and 
impelled him in a bold career of enlarging his 
business, investing his gains, and thus amassing an 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOUESE. 61 

immense property. From his own testimony, as 
well as from the nature of the case and the judg- 
ment of others, I am led to believe that it cost 
him a struffo-le with his natural inclinations, and 
his early habits — more of a struggle than it does 
many men — to distribute his income for charitable 
objects, instead of investing it for larger, and more 
rapid accumulation. It was not for his own pleas- 
ure or reputation — such was his testimony on the 
subject — it was not for his own present gratification 
or future fame that he gave away his thousands, 
and hundreds of thousands. But, if he knew his 
own heart, it was from Christian principle ; it 
was from a sense of duty to God and mankind. 
The love af Christ constrained him, and no other 
power could have impelled him to such labors, 
self-denials and sacrifices. 

Benevolence was not so much a passion as a 
principle with Mr. Williston, and he conducted his 
charities with just as much method and system as 
he did his business. '* Method is the very hinge 
of business," was the placard which was ever be- 
fore the eyes of the workmen in his button mill. 
The same motto governed his whole religious life. 
He planned his giving on the same magnificent 
scale, and with the same thoughtful forecast as he 



G2 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

did his manufacturing ; adhered to his beneficent 
plans, promises and engagements, with the same 
fixed purpose ; disbursed charities as regularly and 
systematically as he paid debts or wages ; mot 
calls for extraordinary donations, as promptly and 
liberally, as hopefully and courageously as he did 
unforeseen exigencies in his business, and was 
as ready to borrow money, if need be, for the one 
purpose as for the other. Indeed, his pledges 
were almost always in advance of his receipts. 
He pledged the money for Williston Seminary, 
and for each of his $50,000 donations to Amherst 
College, before he had made it, and he often did 
the same to meet an emergency of the American 
Board and of Home Missions. He would no more 
have lost a great opportunity of doing good for 
want of money, actually in hand, than he would 
for that reason, have let slip a rare chance of mak- 
ing a pecuniary investment. In short, nothing 
shows more clearly the consistency and true great- 
ness of his character, than the fact that he was so 
manifestly one and the same man, acting on the 
same principles, and by the same methods, whether 
in his business or his religion. He made a re- 
ligion of his business, and he made a business of 
his religion. They were only different departments 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 63 

of the same great life-work wherein the business 
methodized, informed and vitalized the religion, 
while the religion, in turn, elevated, hallowed and 
transfigured the business. In this, as in many 
other things, he showed himself a genuine son of 
the Puritans, though with better manners and in 
a happier age. In this he was like Paul and 
John ; nay, in this he was like Christ. 

The aorerresrate of Mr. Williston's charities, in 
his life-time, must have exceeded a million of dol- 
lars. His will provides for the distribution of 
from one-half to three-quarters of a million more. 
Considerably more than half of this magnificent 
sum he gave to two institutions. So far from 
regretting that he had done so, his only regret 
as he drew near to the time when he must give 
an account of his stewardship, was, that he could 
not do more — that he could not endow the col- 
lege as richly as he did the seminary, and furnish 
it as amply for its great and good work. This 
regret — I state it on the very best authority — 
this regret weighed on his heart, wore upon his 
health, and helped to shorten his life. The sor- 
est trial of his later years was, not the loss of 
property, not the mortification of comparative 
failure in his last business enterprise, but that he 



64 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

was thereby prevented from providing his beloved 
Amherst with the pecuniary means of realizing 
his exalted idea of a Christian college. 

Providence had obviously raised him up and 
marked him out to be a founder of educational 
institutions His own experience, both positive 
and negative, his high appreciation of what edu- 
cation he had, and his passionate desire, his long 
hunger and intense thirst for more, impressed 
him deeply with the value of the higher educa- 
tion given in academies and colleges. His expe- 
rience as a charity student at Phillips Academy 
showed him the necessity of funds and endow- 
ments to such institutions. His subsequent pros- 
perity gave him the means of providing such 
funds. His religious character and experience 
emphasized to him the unspeakable worth of Chris- 
tian seminaries of learning. His views and feel- 
ings and motives in this regard were precisely 
such as iuspired the original founders of Amherst 
College. He wished to found and foster institu- 
tions for the glory of God, and the salvation of 
men ; for the propagation of truth and righteous- 
ness in the earth. He saw that there was room 
for another and better Phillips Academy, in the 
valley of the Connecticut. He felt that there 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 65 

was an imperative demand for another college as 
richly endowed as Harvard, but more evangelical, 
more Christian, in old Massachusetts. And he 
believed that there could be no better location 
for such institutions, than old Hampshire, his 
native county, which, as statistics showed, already 
surpassed all other counties in its percentage of 
educated men and of church members. He be- 
lieved in endowing institutions of learning and re- 
ligion. He had good reason for this ; therein as 
we have seen, he placed himself among the wisest, 
greatest, and most far-seeing of mankind. And 
whatever Mr. Williston did, he believed in doing 
it well. He always made, and provided for, the 
best things of their kind — the best houses, the 
best mills, the best machinery, the best fabrics, 
the best church edifices, the best colleges and sem- 
inaries of learning ; believing this to be at once 
the truest economy and the wisest policy. Like 
the historians and artists of ancient Greece, he 
wished his work to endure and be " a possession 
forever ;" and it is only the best structures, those 
which cost time and money, that endure. 

Besides these two great and permanent institu- 
tions, however, he was a constant and liberal 
giver to a great variety of literary, charitable and 



66 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

religious objects. He contributed liberally, very lib- 
erally to the support of the gospel at home. lie 
was an unfailing contributor to the regular period- 
ical charities of the church of which he was a 
member. His donations to the great national so- 
cieties, especially for the freedmen and home and 
foreign missions, w^ere as constant as the seasons, 
and as generous as his resources were large. He 
sowed beside all waters, at the same time that 
he planted trees, and laid foundations for many 
generations. 

Those who are skilled in such calculations can 
easily calculate what this million of dollars which 
Mr. Williston distributed in his life-time, would have 
amounted to at the time of his death, if it had all 
been invested as fast as it accrued at compound 
interest; and we all know it would have been a 
vast sum ; it would have made one of the richest 
men of this age of millionaires. And how easy it 
woidd have been for him when he had made, we 
will say, his first fifty or hundred thousand dollars, 
instead of expending so much of it for charitable 
purposes, or even laying it out in the extension of 
his business, to have invested it all, as fast as it 
came in, in stocks and honds and mortgages. But 
where would Easthampton then have been ; where 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 67 

then would have been WillLston Seminary ; what 
then would have become of Amherst College ; and 
where would our Missionary Boards and Sanitary 
and Christian Commissions have looked for help in 
their exigencies ? It would have been a luxury 
for a selfish miser — it would have been a natural 
and an intellectual pleasure for Mr. Williston to 
have sat still and seen his property roll up, tens of 
thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, per- 
chance tens of millions, into a more than princely 
fortune. But how much purer and sweeter the 
pleasure of seeing his native town prosper, and the 
Seminary that bears his name grow, and the College 
that he saved extending its influence — how much 
greater the luxury of employing and supporting 
hundreds of flimilies and thousands of hands in his 
business, and enlightening the eyes, gladdening the 
hearts, saving the souls of a multitude that no man 
can number, in this and in other lands, by the 
fruits of his beneficence ! Mr. Williston had the 
wisdom to make this better choice, and the satis- 
faction of seeing in part its happy results; and I 
bless God that we whom he has associated with 
himself in some of his counsels and trusts, have 
been permitted to rejoice with him in this supreme 
satisfaction. 



68 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

Mr. Williston had an ear lor music; he enjoyed 
highly and intelligently appreciated, as we all know, 
the performances of the choice bands which he was 
at so much pains and expense to procure for the 
Anniversaries of Willistoh Seminarv. But he once 
said to me that " the hum of the factory was sweeter 
music than the best concert he ever heard." There 
was a genuine horn bubiness man. But that was 
not the whole significance of the remark. In order 
to understand all the sweetness of that music, the 
end which he sought in his business must be 'taken 
into consideration, as well as the means to that 
end. There is no happiness for man on earth like 
that of a great and good work prosecuted diligently, 
enthusiastically, for a great and good end. That was 
the music which filled the ear and inspired the soul 
of Mr. Williston. 1 pity the man who hath none 
of this music in him. He is fit for treason, strata- 
gems and spoils. 

Mr. Williston was not a mere accumulator of 
money. He was a creator of values. He was an 
inventor of new fabrics, and new ways and means 
for their manufacture. He was an originator of 
new enterprises. He was the first and for some 
time the only manufacturer of covered buttons in 
the country. The manufacture of elastic suspenders 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 69 

was also a new industry. Most of the other manu- 
factures which he and his partners introduced into 
Easthainpton w^ere comparatively new enterprises. 
He kept in advance of the line of march in trade 
and manufactures, and by the time the rest of the 
line came up so as to share the business and divide 
the profits, he was ready, if necessary, to enter 
upon some new and more remunerative business. 
At the same time, so far-seeing and so conservative 
have been his plans, that the first button company 
of the country is now the largest covered-button 
concern in the world ; and most of the other com- 
panies still take the lead in their several lines of 
business. Williston Seminary, founded to be a clas- 
sical school of the highest order and to become an 
English college, was a new idea; or, rather, it was 
at once novel and conservative — it was, like the 
works of God and all the greatest and best works 
of men, a development and at the same time a crea- 
tion. And the way in which he provided in his 
will for its continued growth and progress for at 
least a generation or two to come, was as unique as 
the institution itself, and as sagacious as it was 
original and peculiar. 

An almost uninterrupted tide of prosperity bore 
Mr. Williston along from year to year, and from 



70 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

one new and successful enterprise to another, for 
more than thirty years, until in 18G6, when he 
was already more than three-score years and ten, 
he entered upon by far the largest and most ad- 
venturous of all his undertakings; the building 
of the last Williston mill and the manuflicture of 
cotton sewing thread. This proved a failure, 
cost him the direct loss of half a million of 
money, and indirectly no one can calculate how 
much more, oppressed his declining years with 
disappointment and anxiety, brought on a tortur- 
ing, chronic, incurable disease, and shortened his 
days by perhaps a decade of years that should 
have been the most fruitful and happy years of 
his life. His own judgment in review of this 
period of life is contained m the last letter 
which I ever received from him, in which he says, 
" My experience leads me to think that a man 
of seventy years should draw his business into a 
smaller compass rather than enlarge it." It is 
understood that he did not follow the advice of 
one of his silent partners in this move. Whether 
he misunderstood the counsel of the other, or 
whether a kind and wise Providence intended to 
teach him lessons in the school of adversity that 
he could never have learned in prosperity, and 



COMMEMOKATIVE DISCOURSE. 71 

to bestow on him inward and spiritual blessings 
of flir more value than money, is a question 
which can be answered only in the light of an- 
other world. It is not strange, however, that he 
took that unfortunate step. His prosperity was at 
the spring-tide. The successes and gains of the 
Avar were enormous. He was flush with health, 
strength, courage, hope, self-reliance and trust in 
God. Ambition and benevolence both seemed to 
bid him go forward. That music which so charmed 
and inspired him at once as a business man and 
a Christian, filled his ears and impelled him on- 
ward. So far as success in business was con- 
cerned, it was now destined to prove the song of 
the sirens. But it had been the song of the seraphs 
in all his previous life, and how was he to dis- 
tinguish ? But, perhaps, this sore trial was need- 
ful for his spiritual good. Doubtless, on the whole, 
it was wisely ordered, and sanctified and over- 
ruled to work in him the poaceable fruits of 
righteousness. Certainly he developed under its 
influence in his latter days some of the sweetest, 
loveliest, richest fruits of his broad, deep and man- 
ifold character. 

He has been accused, perhaps I should say sus- 
pected, of being ambitious and of giving, not so 



72 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

iiiut'h for the sake of {illeviatinii; sorrow and doiiiff 
good, as of gaining a name. But what gre^it and 
good man is not ambitious? If it is a -weakness, 
it is the last infirmity of noble minds. When 
wisely guided and properly controlled, it is the 
strongest and grandest impulse to great achieve- 
ments. A sanctified ambition is one of the holi- 
est motives to good works. And who does not 
aspire to a good name ? Has not inspiration pro- 
nounced it to be better than precious ointment? 
In due subordination to other and higher princi- 
ples, the desire to perpetuate one's name is a 
proper motive for a man and a Christian. And 
if ever a man fully resolved and strove earnestly 
to keep this motive in complete subordination to 
the glory of God and the good of mankind, that 
man — if I knew him, and if he knew himself — 
that man was Mr. Williston. When a great ob- 
ject was to be accomplished, he was as walling to 
give large sums of money without his name as 
with it. Witness his munificent donation to Walker 
llall in Amherst, which was to bear the name of 
another donor, and his repeated efforts to obtain 
still larger donations both from Dr. Walker and 
Mr. Hitchcock, whom a selfish ambition would 
rather have discouraged and set aside as rivals, as 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 73 

competitors for the highest place among the friends 
and patrons of the institution. It was not merely 
to perpetuate his own memory that he gave his 
name to the seminary, and the foundations which 
he established. It was essential to the prosperity 
and usefulness of Williston Seminary that it should 
be called, not like high schools and small academies, 
by the name of the place, but like other larger and 
better endowed institutions, by the name of the 
founder ; and for this reason, he was urged by his 
wisest and best counselors, to give it his name. It 
was for the interest of Amherst College that his 
foundations and his college edifice, should be called 
by his name, as an advertisement to the public, 
that it was at least, partially endowed, and also as 
an example and an inducement to others to do 
likewise. And if the Trustees should vote to call 
the institution " Williston College, or the University 
at Amherst," as he forbade them to do while he 
lived, but as in gratitude and honor they are bound 
to do, now that he is dead, and as every officer and 
every student who was connected with it. when he 
made the donation that saved it, would hold up both 
hands to have them do, it would not redound more 
to the honor of the donor, than it would conduce 
to the reputation and prosperity of the institution. 

10 



74 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

He has been charged with driving sharp bargains, 
getting a great deal of work out of his men, and 
too rigidly exacting every cent of his dues. It is 
a charge which is often made against tliose who 
have grown rich by close calculations, careful 
watching of the markets and nice balancing of 
wages and prices, especially in the manufacture 
and sale of small articles at an almost infinites- 
imally small profit on each article. Sometimes it 
is made honestly and candidly, but frequently, I 
suspect, in sheer envy and jealousy; and generally, 
I think, it is made ignorantly, without any real 
consideration of the facts or the principles in- 
volved. The same charge was made against Sam- 
uel Ikidgett, the Christian merchant and philan- 
thropist of Kingswood, near Bristol, England, who 
began his career of money-making and money- 
saving in his boyhood, Avhen he picked up a horse- 
shoe, went three miles with it and got a penny 
for it, and continued it till he gave away $10,000 
a year for philanthropic objects. And the charge 
was answered at length, and I think conclusively, 
by Mr. Bayne in his " Christian Life." The chief 
points of his answer are briefly these : To buy 
cheap and sell dear is the law of trade and the 
only way fortunes are made. In this process he 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 75 

who has the capital and the faculty will inevitably 
have the advantage over him who has not. It 
you see the gleam of a gold vein where I saw 
only clay, the reward is justly j^ours ; if you know 
the ground where corn will grow better than I, 
your sheaves must be more numerous than mine ; 
if you have stronger sinews and more persever- 
ance, and choose to toil for hours in the wester- 
ing sun after I have unyoked my team, you must 
lay a wider field under seed than I. The pearls 
are for him that can and will dive, the golden 
apples for him that can and will climb. His men 
had a profound knowledge that he was not to be 
trifled with. The incompetent and the indolent 
were promptly discharged. A man must perform 
what he undertook, or he must go. " Why, sir," 
said one Avho had been long in his service, '• I do 
believe as he would get, ay, just twice as much 
work out o' a man in a week as another master." 
Business is one thing and charity is another. 
Business must be conducted in business ways and 
on business principles. Now, large gains by means 
of small profits on large sales is a prime rule, is 
almost a first principle of success in trade or man- 
ufactures. And to demand that this shall be sriven 
up in one instance — whether it be by increase of 



76 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

wages, reduction of prices, relaxation of services 
or release of debts, is virtually to demand that it 
shall be given up in all cases ; and to give it up 
in all cases were to knock out the very corner- 
stone both of individual success and of public 
prosperity. All that can be demanded under the 
name of manufacturing or mercantile honor is, 
not charity, but justice and fairness. And this, 
not charity, but justice and fairness, is at once for 
the individual weal and for the public good. It 
is nature's own way of spurring on the indolent 
and having her work well done ; and however in- 
dividuals may smart or grumble, it most effectually 
subserves the interests of the community. 

He sometimes gave offence to employees by the 
rare truthfulness and frankness with which he told 
them what was for their good. He never feared 
to speak out what he believed to be his own 
rights, or their duties in the relation that existed 
between them. He never would conceal or dis- 
guise the truth when, in his opinion, justice to 
himself or the welfare of others required it to be 
spoken. Severe in judging himself, he some- 
times became conscious that he had been too se- 
vere in censuring others, and then he was just as 
frank in retracting the censure as he had been in 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 77 

uttering it, and just as ready to make honorable 
amends to the humblest workman as he would 
have been to a person of the most exalted station. 
ITe not only condescended to men of low estate, 
but when time permitted, and ^as occasion required, 
he conversed with them in the most intimate and 
winning way. He sympathized with the poor, for 
lie had been poor, and he proved himself to them 
a friend in need and so a friend indeed. For he not 
only gave them money, which is a comparatively 
easy thing for a man of wealth to do, but what is 
far better, he gave them thought and care and 
wise counsel; he tried to put them in the way 
of earning a livelihood for themselves ; he helped 
them to form habits of industry, economy, tem- 
perance and piety ; he suffered with them in their 
sorrows and rejoiced with them in their prosperity; 
he was always faithful and true to them, though 
they did not always fulfill their promises to him ; 
in short, he w^as a father to them, and like their 
Father in Heaven, he was kind even to the un- 
thankful and the evil. I have in my possession 
the strongest written testimonies to this effect, 
accompanied by the most touching expressions of 
gratitude and affection from those whom he thus 
befriended in health and in sickness, and whom 



78 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

he thus lifted from extreme poverty to circum- 
stances of comparative comfort and independence. 

Mr. Williston's character was not perfect, any 
more than his judgment was infallible. Doubtless 
he had much to contend with. Great men, strono; 
natures always have. But who of us is perfect. He 
that is without sin among you, let him cast the first 
stone. And when we look at the pure, solid, mas- 
sive gold of his noble character and his useful life, 
the canker and rust of real faults is scarcely dis- 
cernible ; while some of these alleged faults are 
seen to be only the alloy which is essential to the 
value and use of the current coin. 

The history of Mr. Williston's private life was 
quite peculiar. His domestic and social affections 
were tender and strong. When he had already 
come to be a prosperous and, for those times, a 
wealthy man, a friend congratulated him on his suc- 
cess in business. His reply was, " I would gladly 
give up every dollar and begin life a poor man, if I 
could only have back my children that 1 have lost." 
if we may trust the testimony of their grandmother 
Williston — a partial, perhaps, and yet a competent 
and credible witness — they were singularly lovely 
and beautiful children, constitutionally, if not even 
morbidly, gentle, amiable and religious, such chil- 



COMMEMOKATIYE DISCOURSE. 79 

dren, '" with less of earth in them than heaven," 
as give us glimpses of what the children of God 
are in their Father's house, and so, as " fire ascend- 
ing seeks the sun," they were soon translated to 
their proper sphere. Ere this, we may believe, 
they have been restored to the embrace of their 
loving, longing father. Perhaps they were wait- 
ing to welcome him at the heavenly gates, the 
same yet how different, still childlike and dis- 
tinctly recognizable, yet in what loftier stature and 
in such forms of seraphic beauty and glory as we 
can scarcely imagine. 

He loved also his adopted children, cherished 
them in their childhood, cared for their education, 
rejoiced in their ripening virtues and graces, and 
felt, as well he might, all a father's complacency in 
their character, pleasure in their prosperity, pride 
and exultation in their honors and successes. And 
w^ien at the celebration of their o;olden weddino-, 
their eight children (counting husbands and wives) 
and their sixteen grandchildren were gathered about 
them at the old homestead, it was as pretty a pic- 
ture as is often seen in this imperfect world; nothing 
seemed w^anting to make their happiness complete. 

And that husband and wife, during the fifty-two 
years that they were spared to each other, how 



80 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

had they shared each other's toils and cares, con- 
sulted each other's interests and wishes, and known 
each other's inmost thoughts and feelings as if they 
were their own; how had they planned and prayed 
and sorrowed and rejoiced together; how had they 
always traveled together and returned together, 
visited or staid at home together, gone out and 
come in and risen up and sat down together, and 
lived and moved and had their being in and for 
each other, always not onl}^ one flesh, but palpably 
one mind, one heart, one spirit — almost always in 
one ^9Z«(?^, till they seemed, even to their neigh- 
bors, how much more to themselves, inseparable 
the one from the other ! She was eyes and ears 
and feet and hands to him. He was head and 
heart and soul and spirit to her. Each was the 
other's life — each the other's higher, better, dearer 
self. AMio can conceive the pang, the tvrench when 
such a couple are separated — who imagine the 
blessedness of a speedy, perfect and perpetual re- 
union in heaven ! 

Mr. AVilliston's relation to his brothers was beauti- 
ful ; his affection for them was very tender. Samuel 
resembled his mother ; Nathan is the livino; imafre 
of his father; Payson was like and yet strangely 
unlike both. And it seemed as if the spirits of 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 81 

the parents hovered over the hrothers whenever 
they met, and drew them towards each other with 
a more than fraternal love. The two brothers who 
have deceased were as unlike each other in their 
person, manners and character as thev were in 
their ways of doing good — the one ever sowing 
seed for an immediate harvest, the other planting 
trees and founding institutions for many generations. 
It was beautiful to hear them rally each other on 
their differences and their peculiarities, and at the 
same time to see how manifestly they sought the 
same end in different ways, and, although person- 
ally unlike, they were one in spirit. Lovely and 
pleasant in their lives, in death they were not 
long divided. But, methinks, the happiness of the 
two brothers will not be quite perfect till the third 
has joined them in the better land. 

Mr. Williston had a healthy and hearty affection 
for his native place. I fear his fellow-townsmen 
do not realize how much he loved it, nor fully ap- 
preciate how much he has done for it. I suspect 
they do not know, as well as I do, how near they 
came to losing him. He believed he might become 
richer, he hesitated for a time whether he might 
not also be more useful, to found Williston Semin- 
ary somewhere else, and himself go with it. After 
11 



82 COMMEMOKATIYE DISCOURSE. 

much prayerful aud anxious deliberation, lie decided 
to remain; and love for the place of his birth was 
one, and not the smallest, of the weights that turned 
the scale. He found Easthampton a mere hamlet, 
with an old meeting-house on the common and a 
few poor farms scattered around. He left it one 
of the richest and most beautiful towns in Hamp- 
shire County, a great educational and manufacturing 
center, with beautiful farm-houses, (villas they might 
almost be called,) and several model villages clus- 
tering about elegant churches and a model sem- 
inary of learning. He turned its very brooks into 
silver and its sands to gold — not, however, the gold 
and silver of the miser, Ijut that of the Latin 
poet, which shines only by its nse. The town 
will be known in history as his birthplace. 
Strangers will visit the spot where he was born, 
the house in which he lived and died, and the grave 
in which he was buried — he who founded Williston 
Seminary, and saved Amherst College, and lived 
and acquired wealth only to glorify God and do 
good to men. And not only the seminary, but the 
town, will be the monument of Samuel Williston. 
Eeligion was the controlling principle of Mr. 
Williston's life. The editor of the daily morning 
newspaper of our valley speaks of the objects of 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 83 

his life as two : " The making of money and the 
serving of God." That is not, perhaps, wide of 
the mark. But he himself, I am sure, would have 
preferred another way of stating it. In his own 
consciousness his object was one, viz., the serving 
of God by the making of money. That which 
the London Times said of Mr. Peabody may with 
equal truth and emphasis be said of Mr. Willis- 
ton : " He did not become charitable because he 
had become rich, but lie became rich that he might 
be charitable." But with the former charity was 
an end, while Avith the latter even charity was 
chiefly a means to please and honor God. Charity 
with him was the fruit of Christian piety. Hu- 
mility, reverence, worship and obedience were also 
marked characteristics of his religion. He feared 
God and kept his commandments. He was emi- 
nently conscientious. He was anxious — literally 
and emphatically anxious, to know and do his whole 
duty. He was inflexibly resolved on doing right. 
His theology was that of the Puritans and the Pil- 
o-rim fathers. Like them his reli<irion was cast in 
the mould of the Old Testament. The fliith, hope, 
love and joy of the gospel were not wanting, but 
they were less conspicuous. Yet he believed in 
the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart and loved 



84 COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

liim supremely. He never doubted the truth of 
Christianity, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the 
doctrines of evangeh'cal religion, the divinity of 
Christ and his power to save the chief of sinners. 
He only doubted his own personal relations to 
Christ and the great salvation, or as he would have 
expressed it, his personal acceptance. Of this he 
wanted assurance. This, however, seems to have 
been given him, in good measure, as he drew 
near his end. "I think I am going; throuijrh safe — 
indeed, I think I may say, I know I am." "If there 
is anything I hate it is sin ; and I knoiv I love the 
Lord Jesus Christ and his cause." ''I am in my 
heavenly Father's hands, and he will do that which 
is -right and best for me." These were anionii: his 
last utterances. 

He died Saturday, July 18th, and Avas buried Mon- 
day, July 20th, frotn his own house, which was 
fdled with the friends and distinguished strangers, 
while the people of the town crowded the lawn, 
at the doors and beneath the windows, mourners 
all, to express their sympathy with the familj^, to 
bemoan their own loss and to do honor to his 
memory. 

The richest legacy he has left us is his charac- 
ter and his example. Happy will it be for his 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 85 

family and friends, his neighbors and acquaint- 
ances, if they tread in the footsteps of his faith 
and good works. It behooves the trustees of the 
institutions which he has founded to be faithful 
to their trust and keep and build them up on the 
foundations which he has laid. He loved them 
as his children and provided for them as his heirs; 
it is our duty and privilege to care for them as 
wards and to cherish them as if they were our 
own daughters. The teachers and pupils of these 
seminaries should never forget his answer — so often 
repeated by his lips and so well illustrated in his 
whole life — to the first question in religion and 
the highest question in philosophy : What is the 
chief end of man ? He believed with all his heart 
that his chief end and the chief end of every man 
is "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." He 
has taught the rich the right use of money and 
the wisdom of beino; their own executors. And 
we may all learn from him the beauty and the 
secret of a truly noble life. 



A DISCOURSE 



COMMEMORATIVE OF 



HON. SAMUEL WILLISTON. 



DKLIVERED IN THE 



PAYSON CHUKOH AT EASTHAMPTON, 



/ 

Skptembku 1.1. 1874. 



AND ALSO IN 



THE COLLEGE CHURCH AT AMHERST, SEPTEMBER 20. 
By W. S. TYLER, 

WII.LISrON PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN AMHERST COI-LEGE. 



SPRINGFIELD, MASS. : 

CLARK W. BRYAN AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
187 4. 



^egcLTds of fixe Exeaixtors, 



EMILY G. WILLISTON, 
M. F. DICKINSON, JR.. 
E. H. SAWYER, 
A. L. WILLISTON. 



y^ <T. <2: 



L<" <L' <L 









: <r c: < 



c. C C < 






^ 






<3e: < 






.4 






«^E3e 













«^^<V:: 



<3: 


c < 


< ^^f' 




- *- "Ci.- 


t 


■■- <1< 


c: 


<Z< 


( , ^ 


CJC < 


■: C 


Cfc <■ 


' ( 


ex. < 


< 


CiC 


< 


ex 


I 


<:$:-. 


'- V, 


<x:: 


t t. 


oc: 


(. 


CICZ 


Cl.< 


<r<r__ 


e«SL 


•OC 


t«r- 















oc 


•«t_s. 


<-<"'" 


^3 


<:jc:^ 


^3 


<3c: 


<3: 


«^ 


<X 




o: 


<^ 


cs: 


«: 


' <:• 


OC 


' <n 


OC 


<3C 


oC 


" <::« 


«3C 


dC 


CC 


oc 


<r 


csi^ 


c<: 


<x 


CC 


oc^ 


cc; 


cc 


<3:: 


cc 


<jr 


<x 


<3c: 


' <5C 


<x:«. 


- i 


KL « 


r «rcc 


c:: 


«lXi< 


CT. ^ 


tees; 




OOCS 



^^'--^^ 



<:«.: 


<x;' ^ 


<■ <3C. . 


*cr « 


<*- 




t <c.: < 


<3; « 


^a 


« c<r •< 


CT~, j^ 




cc 


. cc: < 




^ 


<:; < 


... CSC 


\. 


cc 


^. <3C_ « 


ci:<cr 


^ 


<z <. 


c c<: 


«^ « 


,' ^ 


c c 


'■ «:_ 


<: <<: 


, ^ 


<: <: 


« c<: 


^1 **- 




<i «_ 


<< c<: 


c: <c 




<r < 


... <*:; 


<r <t 




tc 


<< <3C 


<:'C 




<: c^ 


.<• <«:: 


<Z <s^ 




c^c 


, «3:i_ 


<r. < 




«r<: 


<. <sr 


" < «. 




<r <: 


•^- ^ 


- <: .C 


— 




■ .... «i 


d ' 




<r^" 


<:c «r 


<r < 




C-<H ' 


-xsi. «cr_ ' 


c: < 


* 


c^.<~^- 


<« ■ ^m 


<r c 






«. ^t^< 


r < ' 



